Many people conduct conference calls involving multiple participants or multiple parties for business or other purposes. Often, conventional conference call systems have poor sound quality. Some participants may be difficult to hear loudly or clearly due to their distance from a microphone, background noise, sound absorption in the room, or interference from reverberation in the room. As a result, the intelligibility of speech may be diminished. In addition, conventional conference call systems may not be adaptable to various ambient conditions. For example, a number of occupants may enter or leave a room, ambient background may increase during the call, or windows or doors may open or close. Further, traditional systems often have limited mobility, i.e., they cannot be easily moved to new locations within a room or to new rooms. Another drawback is that many conventional systems are costly.
One conventional system for conducting conference calls involves a dedicated conference call unit comprising a microphone and a speaker located somewhere in a room. A system comprising a dedicated conference call unit may use a telephone system protocol or an internet-based protocol to route calls between parties. This conventional system may suffer from poor sound quality, and it may be costly. Further a conventional dedicated conference call unit may take up valuable space on, for example, a table in a meeting room. In addition, a dedicated conference call unit may have limited mobility and may be unable to adapt to changing ambient conditions.
Another example of a conventional system for conducting conference calls involves using an array of microphones in a room. For example, each user might have a dedicated microphone that the user turns on and off when speaking or listening, respectively. Alternatively, an array of passive microphones may be installed in the room. While arrays of microphones may improve the ability to capture audio from each participant in some cases, they are often costly. Further, an array of microphones may have limited mobility and may be unable to adapt to changing ambient conditions.
Alternatively, another conventional system for conducting conference calls involves using mobile phones, personal computers, tablets, or other user devices to conduct conference calls. For example, a participant may use a cell phone in speaker-mode to allow several co-located participants to join the conference call. This system is often less expensive and more mobile than dedicated conference call systems. However, conference calls conducted with user devices often suffer from poor sound quality, and this system may be unable to adapt to changing ambient conditions.
In addition to the problems described above, many conventional systems do not address the so-called “cocktail party problem,” in which the speech of at least one of multiple competing participants is identified against a backdrop of noise.
In view of the shortcomings and problems with traditional methods of stripping sensitive data, an improved and unconventional system and method for conducting conference calls with better audio quality and increased speech intelligibility, improved mobility, greater adaptability, and low cost is desired.